In What Sense Are Vaccines "Working"? (UPDATED: Jul 12/22)

I’m confused. Shouldn’t full vaccination be decreasing, not increasing, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths?

When you run an experiment, it’s probably a good idea to, you know… monitor the results. Maybe look at the data, ask whether your hypothesis is working.

Look at these charts and tell me what you see.

(Charts courtesy of the incomparable Ian Miller at Unmasked):

Vermont, nearly 100% vaccinated, and look at the hospitalizations:

Iceland: 100% vaccinated, and look at the cases:

Iceland update (Jul 12/22):

Gibraltar: 100% vaccinated (for a while now) and look at the cases:

The European Journal of Epidemiology studied vaccination vs. daily new cases in 68 countries and 2947 U.S. counties, and said this in September: “At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.” https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7.pdf

Look at the trendline. “Marginally positive”, meaning more vaxxed = more cases.

(Also note that poor, lonely dot at the top, Israel, who vaccinated earliest and hardest, and who now suffer the highest cases per million in the world.)

Update Jul 12/22: Australia

Update Jul 12/22: New Zealand

Update Jul 12/22: Singapore

Update Jul 12/22: France

I can’t think of a sense in which this can be said to be “working”.

If it was working, wouldn’t these charts look exactly the opposite?

How much more evidence do we need to shut the experiment down?